第75章

"But if you can give way to your husband," she said, speaking to Katharine, as if there were a separate understanding between them, "a happy marriage is the happiest thing in the world.""Yes," said Katharine, "but--" She did not mean to finish her sentence, she merely wished to induce her mother and her aunt to go on talking about marriage, for she was in the mood to feel that other people could help her if they would. She went on knitting, but her fingers worked with a decision that was oddly unlike the smooth and contemplative sweep of Lady Otway's plump hand. Now and then she looked swiftly at her mother, then at her aunt. Mrs. Hilbery held a book in her hand, and was on her way, as Katharine guessed, to the library, where another paragraph was to be added to that varied assortment of paragraphs, the Life of Richard Alardyce. Normally, Katharine would have hurried her mother downstairs, and seen that no excuse for distraction came her way. Her attitude towards the poet's life, however, had changed with other changes; and she was content to forget all about her scheme of hours. Mrs. Hilbery was secretly delighted. Her relief at finding herself excused manifested itself in a series of sidelong glances of sly humor in her daughter's direction, and the indulgence put her in the best of spirits. Was she to be allowed merely to sit and talk? It was so much pleasanter to sit in a nice room filled with all sorts of interesting odds and ends which she hadn't looked at for a year, at least, than to seek out one date which contradicted another in a dictionary.

"We've all had perfect husbands," she concluded, generously forgiving Sir Francis all his faults in a lump. "Not that I think a bad temper is really a fault in a man. I don't mean a bad temper," she corrected herself, with a glance obviously in the direction of Sir Francis. "Ishould say a quick, impatient temper. Most, in fact ALL great men have had bad tempers--except your grandfather, Katharine," and here she sighed, and suggested that, perhaps, she ought to go down to the library.

"But in the ordinary marriage, is it necessary to give way to one's husband?" said Katharine, taking no notice of her mother's suggestion, blind even to the depression which had now taken possession of her at the thought of her own inevitable death.

"I should say yes, certainly," said Lady Otway, with a decision most unusual for her.

"Then one ought to make up one's mind to that before one is married,"Katharine mused, seeming to address herself.

Mrs. Hilbery was not much interested in these remarks, which seemed to have a melancholy tendency, and to revive her spirits she had recourse to an infallible remedy--she looked out of the window.

"Do look at that lovely little blue bird!" she exclaimed, and her eye looked with extreme pleasure at the soft sky. at the trees, at the green fields visible behind those trees, and at the leafless branches which surrounded the body of the small blue tit. Her sympathy with nature was exquisite.

"Most women know by instinct whether they can give it or not," Lady Otway slipped in quickly, in rather a low voice, as if she wanted to get this said while her sister-in-law's attention was diverted. "And if not--well then, my advice would be--don't marry.""Oh, but marriage is the happiest life for a woman," said Mrs.

Hilbery, catching the word marriage, as she brought her eyes back to the room again. Then she turned her mind to what she had said.

"It's the most INTERESTING life," she corrected herself. She looked at her daughter with a look of vague alarm. It was the kind of maternal scrutiny which suggests that, in looking at her daughter a mother is really looking at herself. She was not altogether satisfied; but she purposely made no attempt to break down the reserve which, as a matter of fact, was a quality she particularly admired and depended upon in her daughter. But when her mother said that marriage was the most interesting life, Katharine felt, as she was apt to do suddenly, for no definite reason, that they understood each other, in spite of differing in every possible way. Yet the wisdom of the old seems to apply more to feelings which we have in common with the rest of the human race than to our feelings as individuals, and Katharine knew that only some one of her own age could follow her meaning. Both these elderly women seemed to her to have been content with so little happiness, and at the moment she had not sufficient force to feel certain that their version of marriage was the wrong one. In London, certainly, this temperate attitude toward her own marriage had seemed to her just. Why had she now changed? Why did it now depress her? It never occurred to her that her own conduct could be anything of a puzzle to her mother, or that elder people are as much affected by the young as the young are by them. And yet it was true that love--passion --whatever one chose to call it, had played far less part in Mrs.

Hilbery's life than might have seemed likely, judging from her enthusiastic and imaginative temperament. She had always been more interested by other things. Lady Otway, strange though it seemed, guessed more accurately at Katharine's state of mind than her mother did.

"Why don't we all live in the country?" exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery, once more looking out of the window. "I'm sure one would think such beautiful things if one lived in the country. No horrid slum houses to depress one, no trams or motor-cars; and the people all looking so plump and cheerful. Isn't there some little cottage near you, Charlotte, which would do for us, with a spare room, perhaps, in case we asked a friend down? And we should save so much money that we should be able to travel--""Yes. You would find it very nice for a week or two, no doubt," said Lady Otway. "But what hour would you like the carriage this morning?"she continued, touching the bell.